1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a program recommendation apparatus that recommends programs for playback, distribution, or recording and enables recommendation of even programs having no information such as program attributes.
2. Description of the Related Art
The generally used method of recommending programs according to the users' preferences is to receive an EPG (Electronic Program Guide) from a broadcast or a network and recommend programs that the user would like to watch by using the categories included in the EPG information. There is also a method in which categories that that user wants to watch are received separately from the EPG information and are classified into EPG categories (see Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2000-115646 (Para. 0015, FIG. 2)). There is also a method that analyzes preferences from a viewer's history of program selection operations etc. in order to analyze the viewer's preferences, and generates a program table based on viewing tendencies (Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2000-13708 (Para. 0008, FIG. 2)). To determine users' preferences more precisely, there is another method that uses the presence or absence of user operations at the start and end of a program (Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-369090 (Para. 0038, FIG. 1)).
However, the above conventional methods are problematic in that programs having no program information cannot be recommended.